The Haunt Of Fear: ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Results Thread

agree that mulholland dr is one of the greatest films of the 00s, maybe the greatest, but my "conservative ideas" about horror kept me from voting for it. it's a mystery, a thriller, a melodrama, a doomed romance, an examination of fantasy and illusion and filmmaking, and while it exploits some horror-type moments (most specifically the winkies scene) in toto it doesn't feel like a horror film to me.

it did not even cross my mind to vote for MD in this poll, tho Eraserhead & Inland Empire are such pure distillations of fear, dread & disorientation that they seem to fit the bill much more suitably imo.

it's funny to rewatch mulholland dr. and to see that the payoff to the infamous "winkies scene" is really just [SPOILER]a lady with some black gunk on her face stepping out from behind a dumpster[/SPOILER]. hard to understand what might have made it so incredibly terrifying the first time around. o, but it was! i remember being shit-scared. something kind of magical about that.

yeah it's his timing of sound and motion in the frame that makes it work

I remember watching that scene on repeat on DVD trying to break down the mechanics

thank god jjjusten is not here to see this

Lynch is a master of making the banal totally horrifying. he can make a dim lamp in a room seem like the most terrifying environment ever.

I have no problem seeing the Lynch films on here because I love them so much, but I definitely mentally categorize them more as Erotic Thrillers than Horror.

lol what was "erotic" about IE or Eraserhead

Lynch is no minimalist across the board or anything, but dude has the uncanny knack to make a relatively straightforward shot of a lamp or ceiling just totally menacing and evil. Yeah, sound design has much to do w/ that as well, I guess.

*ceiling fan

messed up babies are totally erotic

Lynch is no minimalist across the board or anything, but dude has the uncanny knack to make a relatively straightforward shot of a lamp or ceiling just totally menacing and evil. Yeah, sound design has much to do w/ that as well, I guess.

Surely a lot of this dread is just his ADD inclusions of hallways, empty doorways, and inanimate objects.

a lot of times there's this low rumble in the background of lynch films, after many years I realized it's v similar to the sound of a highway in the distance

Speaking of messed-up babies, that final shot of Threads... xpost

http://filmbalaya.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/66153-3.jpg

"Speaking of EROTIC THRILLERS, I love the scene when those cute little MONSTERS take in a MIDNIGHT screening of SNOW FRIGHT and the SEVEN PLAGUES!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7240/7221145170_5f9849bab9_o.jpg

64. GREMLINS
Joe Dante, USA, 1984
(299 points, 12 votes)

I admit, I'm not much of an admirer of Gremlins, but it's almost completely worth it just for the fact that it's such a blatant riff on the cuddly, sentimental style of producer Spielberg, who actually went to great lengths to defend Dante's vision.
― Anthony (Anthony F), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 7:35 PM (7 years ago)

I do hope this doesn't degenerate into a thread about Gremlins.
― Pete, Wednesday, November 21, 2001 7:00 PM (10 years ago)

Didn't vote for it, but I do love those little guys.

Nice! Did not include on my ballot because it plays almost as straight-up comedy to me now, but great to see it get some love here.

Not that there's not some genuinely horrifying shit in there, I mean the gremlins do absolutely kill several people, but still.

yeah this is a comedy

didn't vote for it

most horrifying thing in it is the santa/dead dad story tbh

I had to check my ballot on this one, because voting for Gremlins totally sounds like something I'd do, but I did not.

~milk duds~

Lynch is no minimalist across the board or anything, but dude has the uncanny knack to make a relatively straightforward shot of a lamp or ceiling just totally menacing and evil. Yeah, sound design has much to do w/ that as well, I guess.

yeah, i found the first section of lost highway almost unbearably unnerving, bill pullman in the apartment what with those long, dimly lit, almost static shots of yawning beige hallways, always with some eerie whooshing static in the background. nothing ever really happens there, but i just knew that something unspeakable was about to swim up out of that darkness, and that when it did, it would completely break my mind. i think that's lynch's best trick, btw. he gets across this idea, very familiar from nightmares, that the worst thing possible is about to be revealed.

then again, maybe i'm just a sucker for this approach. like i said upthread, the scariest monster, to me, is the one that has not yet taken shape - not the ghost itself, but the shapeless moment in which it seems (perhaps) to be appearing.

love gremlins, love the sequel even more, didn't vote for either

most clearly horror thing lynch has done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYB2FykZgkg

always thought that gremlins was too dumb to spend too much time thinking about.

gremlins is awesome, but yeah, i see it as a comical fantasy adventure with a few dark/scary spots.

When (SPOILER) Spike melts at the end, it freaking HORRIFIED and HAUNTED me as a kid. But, yeah, today it's a comedy.

~milk duds~

LOL. I still growl this sometimes.

Yeah, sound design has much to do w/ that as well, I guess.

absolutely

http://www.hark.com/clips/kdznxgrzft-milk-duds

I have a lot of love for mulholland dr but it ain't horror in my book. now inland empire otoh...

gremlins takes the malevolence of its creatures seriously enough that it works as horror, but it's def at the light end of the spectrum. that's ok, not everything has to be a gruelfest.

it definitely put some fear into me as a kid

well SOMEBODY must have voted for Gremlins..

It was def an integral part of my childhood movie-going experience and as such prob fundamental to my taste for horror in general, but I don't ever have the inclination to return to it for either laughs or scares tbh.

Yay, Gremlins! Another low-placer on my ballot but worthy of inclusion.

can't wait to show it to my kids

Aside from Die Hard, it probably is my favorite Christmas movie, though.

Mulholland is a TV pilot with an "it was all a dream" tack-on finish.

― da croupier, Friday, May 18, 2012 1:07 PM (5 minutes ago)

and casablanca was a hackneyed story worked over by a hodgepodge of screenwriters scrambling to rush the movie into the theaters. in both cases the means of production doesn't amount to much when compared to the finished product.

if you're going to try and dignify mulholland dr worship with a historical precedent, it should probably be Wizard Of Oz.

"dignify"

I'm with Edward III. Gremlins is a fantasy and a comedy, but it is still a horror movie. Made for children.

I think a reasonable, arbitrary cutoff point along the 'horror spectrum' is if a film is squarely marketed toward children. I mean, I never had a Martyrs lunchbox. Yhat said, iirc it was the release of both Gremlins and Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom & the ensuing parental uproar which led directly to the PG-13 rating becoming a thing.

"More like DON'T WHOP ME NOW!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/7221145338_0890be288a_o.jpg

63. SHAUN OF THE DEAD
Edgar Wright, UK, 2004
(301 points, 11 votes)

Also I am willing to bet that between us we know every single person in that film. ONE OF THOSE ZOMBIES COULD HAVE BEEN ME you know!!!
― sarah not at work, Tuesday, April 13, 2004 4:08 AM (8 years ago)

"even zombie flicks can have multiple Star Wars references."
Wha? Please don't make me dislike this film now.
― jaymc (jaymc), Sunday, September 26, 2004 10:15 PM (7 years ago)

This film is better than other films.
― Suedey (John Cei Douglas), Monday, January 17, 2005 4:27 PM (7 years ago)

Ugh, fuck off.

E3 dignified the shit out of that movie

well, i had to make amends for not voting for Shaun in the comedy thread ...

I was afraid this was gonna show up. Sigh. All right.

Another movie I totally support but didn't vote for.